Easton Press Antonia Fraser books
The Wives of Henry the Eighth - signed first edition - 1992
Royal Charles: Charles the II and the Restoration - 1996
Love Letters: An Anthology - 2001
Franklin Library Antonia Fraser books
Mary Queen of Scots - signed limited edition - 1981
Quiet as a Nun - Franklin mystery series - 1990
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Antonia Fraser biography
Born on 27 August 1932, and named Antonia Margaret Caroline Pakenham, Antonia Fraser is the daughter of Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford (1905–2001), and his wife, Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, née Elizabeth Harman (1906–2002); thus, her formal title (form of address) is "Lady Antonia". When she was a teenager, like all her siblings, she became a convert to the Catholic Church, after the conversion of her parents. Her "maternal grandparents were Unitarians a non-conformist faith with a strong emphasis on social reform ..."; in response to criticism of her writing about Oliver Cromwell, she has said: "I have no Catholic blood"; before his own conversion in his thirties, following a nervous breakdown in the Army, she has explained, "My father was Protestant Church of Ireland and my mother was Unitarian up to the age of 20, when she abandoned it." She was educated at St Mary's School Ascot, Ascot and Dragon School, Oxford, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, also her mother's alma mater.
From 1956 until their divorce in 1977, she was married to Sir Hugh Fraser (1918-1984), a descendant of Scottish aristocracy 15 years her senior and a Conservative Unionist MP in the House of Commons (sitting for Stafford), who was a friend of the American Kennedy family. They had six children: three sons, Benjamin, Damian, and Orlando; and three daughters, Rebecca, Flora, and Natasha (Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni), who are all also writers and biographers. Benjamin works for JPMorgan, Damian is the managing director of the investment banking firm UBS AG (formerly S. G. Warburg) in Mexico, and Orlando is a barrister specializing in commercial law (Wroe). Lady Antonia has 17 grandchildren.
On 22 October 1975, Hugh and Antonia Fraser, together with Caroline Kennedy, who was visiting them at their Holland Park home, in Kensington, West London, were almost blown up by an IRA car bomb placed under the wheels of his Jaguar, which had been triggered to go off at 9am when he left the house; the bomb exploded prematurely when it was examined and inadvertently set off by the eminent cancer researcher Gordon Hamilton-Fairley (1930–1975). Hamilton-Fairley, a neighbour of the Frasers, who had been walking his dog, noticed and inspected the device under the car, and died as a result of the blast.
In 1975, Antonia Fraser met and began an affair with playwright Harold Pinter, who was then married to the actress Vivien Merchant. In 1977, after she had been living with Pinter for two years, the Frasers' union was legally dissolved. Merchant spoke about her distress publicly to the press, which quoted her cutting remarks about her rival, but she resisted divorcing Pinter. In 1980, after Merchant signed divorce papers, Fraser and Pinter married.
Harold Pinter died on 24 December 2008, aged 78.
Career
She began work as an "all-purpose assistant" for George Weidenfeld at Weidenfeld & Nicolson (her "only job"), which later became her own publisher and part of Orion Publishing Group, which publishes her works in the UK.
Her first major work, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, was Mary, Queen of Scots (1969), which was followed by several other biographies, including Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973), along with a short biography, is listed in her Orion author's webpage, She won the Wolfson History Award in 1984 for The Weaker Vessel, a study of women's lives in 17th century England. From 1988 to 1989, she was president of English PEN, and she chaired its Writers in Prison Committee.
She also has written detective novels; the most popular involved a character named Jemima Shore were adapted into a television series which aired in the UK in 1983.
In 1983 to 1984, she was president of the Edinburgh Sir Walter Scott Club.
More recently, Fraser published The Warrior Queens, the story of various military royal women since the days of Boadicea and Cleopatra. In 1992, a year after Alison Weir's book The Six Wives of Henry VIII, she published a book with the same title, which British historian Eric Ives cites in his study of Ann Boleyn.
She chronicled the life and times of Charles II in a well-reviewed 1979 eponymous biography. The book was cited as an influence on the 2003 BBC/A&E mini-series, Charles II: The Power & the Passion, in a featurette on the DVD, by Rufus Sewell who played the title character.[citations needed] Fraser has also served as the editor for many monarchical biographies, including those featured in the Kings and Queens of England and Royal History of England series, and, in 1996, she also published a book entitled The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605, which won both the St Louis Literary Award and the Crime Writers' Association (CWA) Non-Fiction Gold Dagger.
Two of the most recent of her thirteen non-fiction books are Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001, 2002), which has been made into the film Marie Antoinette (2006), directed by Sofia Coppola, with Kirsten Dunst in the title role, and Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006).
From 1979 to 1990, she was a panelist on the BBC Radio 4 panel game My Word!, taking the chair for one season in 1983.
She serves as a judge for the Enid McLeod Literary Prize, awarded by the Franco-British Society, having won that prize herself for her biography Marie Antoinette (2001).
Correcting those who notice only her physical beauty – remarked upon both in her youth and well into her seventh decade – some readers and audience members of her talks have stressed that she is "more than just a pretty face" but actually an accomplished historian and "an intellectual."
Antonia Fraser books in order
Mary, Queen of Scots (1969)
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1970)
Dolls (1973)
Cromwell, Our Chief of Men (1973) also published as Cromwell: The Lord Protector
King James VI and I (1974)
The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England [Editor] (1975)
King Charles II (1979) also published as Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration and Charles II
The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-century England (1984).
The Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot (1988) also published as Warrior Queens: The Legends and Lives of Women Who Have Lead Their Nations in War.
The Six Wives of Henry VIII. (1999)
The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605 (1996) also published as Faith and Treason: The Gunpowder Plot.
Marie Antoinette (2001)
Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (2006)
Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter (2010
Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832 (2013)
My History. A Memoir of Growing Up (2015)
Our Israeli Diary: Of That Time, Of That Place (2017)
The King and the Catholics: The Fight for Rights, 1829 (2018)
The Case of the Married Woman: Caroline Norton: A 19th Century Heroine Who Wanted Justice for Women (2021)
Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit (2023)
Jemima Shore novels
Quiet as a Nun (1977)
The Wild Island (1978)
A Splash of Red (1981)
Cool Repentance (1982)
Oxford Blood (1985)
Jemima Shore's First Case (1986)
Your Royal Hostage (1987)
The Cavalier Case (1990)
Jemima Shore at the Sunny Grave (1991)
Political Death (1995)
Quiet as a Nun / Tartan Tragedy / Splash of Red (omnibus) (2005)
Jemima Shore on the Case (omnibus) (2006)
Editor
Scottish Love Poems (1975)
The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (1975)
Love Letters (1976)
The Pleasure of Reading (1992)
A Red Rose or A Satin Heart (2010)
Source and additional information: Antonia Fraser